URGENT: Withdraw Citizenship Act Bill C-24

Within the next few weeks, the Canadian Government could pass Bill C-24 which will make sweeping changes to the Citizenship Act, affecting all Canadians.

International law states that citizenship grants full membership in Canadian society, and is permanent once established.

Bill C-24 allows the government to arbitrarily strip someone of their status, which is morally, legally and ethically wrong.

Bill C-24, the Strengthening Canadian Citizenship Act (SCCA) is fraught with such ethical problems.

The bill will:

make it much more difficult to obtain citizenship,

will make obtaining citizenship more expensive

will replace Judges as decision makers with Immigration officers, and

will make it easier for citizenship to be revoked or stripped from Canadians

What is wrong with the Bill?

Bill C-24 will . . .

Extend the costly language test to include those aged 14 - 64 (currently, only those aged 18 - 55 take the test);

Give Immigration officers authority to deny citizenship if she or he as much as speculates that the applicant may not reside in Canada in the future;

It will increase the residency requirement during which an applicant must be in Canada as a Permanent Resident from 3 to 4 years and does not allow the applicant to count any of the time spent in Canada prior to obtaining permanent residency;

Triple the application fee price;

Removes a person's right to appeal a negative citizenship decision;

Strips the right to an oral hearing in front of a judge for those who are having their citizenship revoked (it will make so this decision is made by a bureaucrat without holding a hearing);

Strips citizenship from those who did not obtain citizenship by birth if an official believes that the person never intended to live in Canada;

Strips citizenship from dual citizens even if they were born in Canada if convicted of certain crimes, even if those convictions occurred outside Canada.